


Night of the Lotus-Eaters

by ghost_suit



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Fix-It, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-11-11
Updated: 2011-11-11
Packaged: 2017-10-25 22:31:56
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,649
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/275558
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ghost_suit/pseuds/ghost_suit
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dean is summoned by the angel that calls itself God.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Night of the Lotus-Eaters

**Author's Note:**

> drunk Nick Cave inspired fix-it fic that breaks it worse. written under the influence of "let's finish all the leftover booze in the house" which i don't recommend and will make a point of not repeating. edited while sober.

The faceless angel who zapped him there pointed out to a pond, indicating silently that Dean should go to it. He shot a dirty look but looking at it’s weird just…he could _see_ it but there was this absence where it’s face should have been. Some new monster he didn’t have a name for. He squared his shoulders and looked out at what the faceless angel was indicating. It was pretty clear that this wasn’t going to end well so he decided on aiming for some dignity and without hesitation went out to walk into the water, acting more brazenly than he really felt, if he were really looking for that honest piece of himself.

The coolness of the black water sent a chill up his back as he descended into it. Castiel wasn’t far out, floating spread-eagle like some fell dead thing, eyes shut, lips parted slightly and formed in the shape of a smile that didn’t look right. His eyes fell to the closed blue flowers, an exposed wrist just breaching the water nearby, the billowing trench coat in the water; just details of what that body wasn‘t anymore. The angel turned god looked eerie in the Egyptian night and Dean’s heart ached for somewhere that was home because this place felt like the end of the earth; a single step more and he might plunge off the edge right into whatever place it was that ’God’ had made his.

“Hello, Dean,” Castiel said, without opening his eyes. Dean’s lower lip jutted out in a sneer, not wanting to hear that familiar greeting coming from the mouth of the perverse caricature of the man he’d known.

“Castiel. Or God; whatever,” Dean replied by way of proving that he was at the very least listening. Every part of him was pulling him towards that suspended body with the urge to maim and murder, if only he knew _how._ Whatever thick poison those souls were in Castiel, they’d made him into something _Cas_ would never have wanted if he’d really known what it’d meant. A fact Dean took as his license to kill.

(Or maybe Cas _knew_ , really did _know_ what it was going to mean and thought that sacrificing himself was somehow a fair compromise even if Dean wouldn’t ever forgive him for it)

“ _Your God._ How have you been?” Castiel asked, still not opening his eyes, whatever soft dreams or nightmares or fantasy beneath his eyelids still holding more interest to him. Things that Dean didn’t trust because none of it was right here, right now in this fucked up reality that never ended.

“Fine,” he answered as coldly as he could muster. Which was approaching artic chill.

Castiel didn’t respond immediately, but Dean could see his lips curving slowly into a frown in the moonlight, a soft crescent. The water creeping up his back through his shirt was starting to send chills into his vertebrae. Or maybe that was the fear setting in.

“You sound ungrateful,” Cas said, finally. The words fell like a hammer, shook his bones, his teeth hummed with anger. He scoffed.

“What, should I be happy that you’ve taken every monster off the planet? It’s not natural. Besides…” Dean trailed, unsure if he wanted to say it but he found his resolve in anger, “Besides, that makes the only monster left _you_.”

At this Cas grinned, teeth looking all too perfect and white and manic. His eyes flicked open and stared straight up into the sky, that was looking impossibly blue; not the _right_ blue anymore as though the gaze of God made it squirm and wither in all attempts to please. Dean didn’t bother questioning if there was anything true to that, all senses on high alert, all muscles limber and ready to snap to if he needed to. Needed to do what? Throw punches? Pull knives? He swallowed when he saw Cas’s fingers twitch as though he were teeming with the same anticipation.

Cas drew himself up languidly in the shallow pond, and moved himself _close_ to Dean, pressing the length of his body against him. Dean held his breath and tried to endure it even as he felt betrayal down between them. Which was a whole different element of fucked up he’d deal with later. Or not.

Besides, he probably wouldn’t get out of this by the usual skin of his teeth that he usually did. He was goddamn prepared to die. Three months, since Cas went nuclear and the monsters started disappearing and Crowley tried to pretend like it was business as usual. But even his silver tongue seemed to have gone leaden, maybe spitting out some truth even; the king of hell didn’t know what was going to happen next for all his goddamn limey smart aleck cleverness.

“Exactly,” he whispered like honey into Dean’s ear. “You’ve been hunting _me.”_

Dean’s body had gone rigidly still, unwilling to give an inch and his heart pounded, starting to feel the fear creeping up around his heart. His broken brother, the fallen angel, hell in fear, regular people gone goddamn crazy as ’God walked the earth’, rebel angel’s massacred, and the putrid stench of all too familiar rotting flesh as all that evil protested being contained in such a weak body and how the whole damn world had no freaking idea what was really at stake. He didn’t move in part for fear of what he might do, nostalgia still convincing him that there was something worth saving in Cas, but because he really was _that afraid_. This thing pressed up against him as it was, all theatrics and seduction, intoxicated with stolen power…if Dean had a knife that’d do any good, he’d plunge it into the things gut, no question. If he could choke it out of him, he wouldn’t hesitate. But he had to hesitate on the pure practicality of survival.

“No, you wouldn’t hesitate,” Cas purred lowly, pressing a hand over the mark that always got put back no matter how many times Dean had to be made whole again. That was enough to send Dean off finally, snarling back,

“That isn’t yours.”

He turned, knowing that he was about to storm off from just might well be _God_ and feeling a bit power drunk himself with the thought, ready to freaking walk back to the States if he had to. But Cas caught his wrist, it what would have almost been tender if it weren’t like being suddenly engulfed by stone.

“Stay.”

“Not your damn dog!” Dean spun to face him as best he could. He wrenched at his hand and felt the strain on old injuries too easily when he wasn’t let go.

“No,” Cas smiled. “Much more than that.”

Dean had little choice but to be drawn in close again, throat clenching and eyes darting from chapped lips up into the drowning pools that were left of Novak’s eyes. Shutting his eyes was the only way to stop him from not getting pulled under. He felt a cold breath of air and knew that it’d been expelled on purpose. Castiel didn’t need to breathe. It passed along his throat and he clenched his teeth. He opened his eyes when the presence backed off. Cas was taking several casual steps backwards, the water making small rippling noises in the otherwise silent landscape. He could barely see his face, the distance quickly swallowing it back up. Just his eyes.

(because it was always his eyes).

“What’d you bring me here for?” Dean demanded. “All the way to freaking Egypt.”

Castiel reached out beside him and broke off a flower from it’s stem and covered it with one hand, doing who-knows-what with it as he stared into Dean’s eyes like the were the most important place on the whole of the goddamn Earth even if it were always going to hell. Dean looked down to the flower as Castiel unclasped his hand, watching as the blue went darker, matching the sky above, while the white seemed almost to glow. Shaped almost like an egg, it looked small and delicate in Castiel’s open palm.

When he came close again, he pressed it firmly against Dean’s lips, flat-out disturbing eyes looking into him too intensely and making him feel smaller than an atom and simultaneously larger than life.

“You must try this,” Castiel coaxed. He leaned into Dean again, nestling his chin between his shoulder and jaw, pressing a ghosts kiss there on his hot skin. What the hell was it with monsters getting all high and fucking horny the second they had the upper hand? Worse yet, how was it that all his human physiology seemed to surrender so easily, leaving only his wavering will power to reject it? The slightest pressure seemed to sear at his throat and threatened to burn through. But he wouldn’t be so lucky. Dean drew up his hand, fingers plucking the bottom of the flower and pulling it out from between them. Examining it he could tell that whatever Cas had done to it, it wasn’t going to be anything _right_.

“Do I have a choice,” Dean muttered, not really asking because he knew the answer. Truly enough, Cas smiled but made no offer for explanation or verbal confirmation meaning that it was flat-out not available for discussion.

He cast a last look of what must’ve been absolute human misery before shutting his eyes again, and placed the bloom into his mouth and tasted nothing but the cool water from the pond on his tongue and the sour taste of inedibles. He swallowed it whole, thinking and half hoping that if the only thing that it brought was death, that it‘d at least be quick. If this _God_ wanted him dead, it’d happen regardless of his protests and last stands and especially his last words that could grope at the air and crumple before they meant anything of significance. It might as well be now. He repeated, just to convince himself; _it might as well be now._

But it wasn’t death; it started in his fingertips, in the skin that held the pressure of his weight. Tingling at first, but turning into roots, stabbing downwards through his flesh. He let himself feel it sink into his bone, tangle around them and start to strangle. It stung at first. It did the same to his throat, pulling him into a viciously placed affront, attacking him at all sides before settling in with a strange somatic slumber that pulled every thought and sensation under. Limbs turned heavy, fingers and hands and feet into oblivion. The thing that he always looked for but could never quite get anymore from sex or alcohol. And now that he had it, it was just flat out terrifying.

When he opened his eyes, the edges of the night were shaky the way it got if he found the right kind of drunk. When he looked at the sky it seemed to _buzz_ even though buzzing shouldn‘t be something that you could see. Soon gravity felt as though it were pulling the whole of his body down into the water, and he felt his knees buckling and couldn’t do anything about it and it crossed his mind that he might drown now, that this might be the big ending, the final cut, the great goddamn tragedy. But a firm arm caught him, and pulled his body close and kept his mouth above the water. A thumb passed over his brow and he couldn’t hold his eyes open, instead lurching forwards into the body the offered itself so freely the way that it didn’t before.

(baptism he didn’t ask for? He didn’t think that God would care about anything like that. Stupid human ritual. Stupid human thought).

A pervading sense of well-being, even if there was nothing left in the world to feel any kind of good about. And then it all goes nightmarish as his brain clambers through the situation. It might’ve been minutes, might’ve been hours, but he gets to it.

“You dosed me,” Dean slurred out. He smiled because he couldn’t put the pieces all together right any more and that was sort of hilarious as much as it was status quo. He lifted a hand up and it felt as though it were underwater because air felt no different from the cool and foreign pool that he was in. Maybe he was already drowning. Being drowned. Couldn‘t tell. He dragged himself up, sinking one hand into dark hair he saw in his mind, thought of the little kind of roots that came with small plants. Sinking sloppily down instead of getting back up, he greedily he moved his hands to Cas’s arms to take purchase of the signature trench coat and dragged himself upwards enough to get his feet back under him. When he couldn’t achieve that quite the way he might’ve meant to he crumpled weakly inwards, pressing his head into the angel’s chest. Dean felt himself laughing as opposed to hearing the way that he should and his heart beat loud and slow in his ears all at the same time. This wasn’t how it was supposed to go; they were so much better before, as _people_ , as friends, or whatever the fuck they were when they kissed, as _so many things_ and this was just depraved and the sound seemed to come in close and distant at the same time and this was never what he loved about Cas, this wasn’t what he wanted, wasn’t what he’d over looked for. Everything was starting to go numb and he shivered, sending ripples out through the water and air and through his fucking head.

He staggered back a bit, finding enough resistance in the air to prop himself on.

“Remember when I wouldn‘t let you die a virgin?” he choked out thinly. Because that was funny too. That was fucked up, too. No, it wasn’t funny. He let go and covered his face with his hands, pressing a palm up into his eye in an attempt to find feeling as he locked his legs to strand free of Cas. The pressure of his palm felt like it went all the way through, comforting like it was scrubbing out the situation as it was happening. Maybe that’s why he was talking about old things. Things a million miles away and that he’d never get back to. Trying to get back to it made him hollow.

“You told him that you were glad it turned out that way,” God said, and it almost sounded right, like the Cas he knew all factual and monotone. Even as it referred to Cas as though he were gone, he could just about pretend. “He agreed. And then you took him yourself.”

“Don’t…steal those memories,” he warned with an accusing finger, “Give those back to him.”

“He often wondered if that was all you wanted from him.”

“I don’t know what I want,” Dean tried to piece everything together with as much honesty as he could. Honesty was important, he thought, more than it usually was. The honesty of how he wanted Castiel, didn’t want him, wanted to kill him, wanted to hold him, fix him, bring him back, send him away never forgive him and tell him that it was going to be okay…everything. You can’t do everything, he thought despairingly. _You_ can’t do _anything_.

“You’re not who you’re supposed to be,” he continued on instead because he didn‘t want to think about how cold he must‘ve seemed to Cas. Trying to keep them and their ugly fucking world separate and making it worse for trying to keep Cas the _good_ part. He dropped his hands so that the could stare into Cas’s eyes (always back to the eyes), defiant and hoping to find something there that would tell him that he understood, that he’d be able to convince him from this point of weakness. But he couldn‘t goddamn see him when he was all the fucking way over there, and it didn‘t matter anyways,

“You’re not Castiel. I only wanted to keep something good. I didn‘t want to wreck that.”

His voice sounded stupid and naïve and slurred even to him and it got loud just for the sake of being loud. It was all swallowed up by atmosphere. The only thing he wanted was to collapse into himself and disappear. But instead he staggered forwards, starting to think that he might be getting a hold on whatever the fuck this thing was that it’d fed him.

Up close he could see that the expression on the god’s face had gone to an impassive stone slate, reminding Dean of the face that Cas made when he didn’t understand something. Maybe this thing shared the same expression for that. His head even tipped to one side and Dean found himself caught in an incontrollable fit of shivering laughter and seemed to have lost the capacity to quell it with anything but reverting back to a smothered and bewildered sobbing. His hands felt too big, his head too far away. He started stumbling backwards which was a damn shame considering how much effort it took him to drag himself anywhere he meant to under these conditions. It crossed his mind again that he might fall and drown. The end of the Great Dean Winchester; fallen flat drunk on his ass into a nothing pond in the middle of nowhere. He was told this was Egypt, but he thought it might just be invented. It might really be nowhere. Thinking it for a second time, it seemed to let the fear get close enough to touch him, give him that last nudge to hammer him down.

He gulped in the water and it was gritty with sediment and panicked so that it went down the wrong way, sending him coughing and spluttering. But it was all underwater and was like getting sucked into a vacuum which only made it worse. He shouldn’t have heard what it sounded like to scream underwater but he did and it was the worst thing he’d ever heard; half imagined but it must‘ve been all real. Shatter, splinter, his ears filled with sharp pains inside the kind that made you think ‘blood’ and deaf.

But strong hands and arms swept in and hauled him out of any real danger of drowning in anything but his own wretchedness. He felt himself dropped onto his back into the dirt and groaned a little, even though it didn’t hurt so much as he needed to make some sound of protest, force some of the bitterness outwards just so that some of it could go anywhere but back inside of himself. He rolled on his side, trying to expel the water out of him.

“I’ll kill you for this,” Dean said thinly, knowing that the threat didn‘t mean anything. But it felt good saying it. He dragged a hand across where his chest should have felt like it was in search of something solid to hold onto. But it slid from under him, a landslide of skin and muscle and water and dirt, disappearing underneath his fingertips. He rolled onto his back and kicked his heels into the sediment in an attempt to sit up. All his limbs seemed about as corporal as fog and he lost sense of where to touch and where anything real ever was. He slammed a fist into the dirt and it felt like the whole limb just melted off.

“Why do you want me like this!” he shouted angrily and laid out flat. “Just kill me! Enough of this Hunter S. shit!”

This wasn’t how he wanted to die. This wasn’t a fight. He didn’t taste the familiar metallic in his mouth, wasn’t choking on it either. There wasn’t a weapon in his hand or his brother by his side.

“Was interested,” it hissed. For the first time, it sounded frustrated. “Made that thing from Castiel.”

“You _fed_ me a goddamn _angel? Castiel?”_

God stood overtop him. Looking up he _still_ couldn’t see it’s face.

“Just a part of one. Castiel is very interesting. A lot of things we didn’t think an angel would have; affection, for one. Not the kind of angel we remember.”

 _We?_

“You told me he was dead,” Dean replies thickly. He’s trying to find his way around having just ingested part of a freaking _angel._ It didn’t make sense. But it made him think of what Novak had said; RIDING THE TAIL OF A COMET; loud, like that. It tasted like devastation, he realizes and it’s overwhelming. There’s so much scope to it, it’s so much bigger than anything he could feel on his own. And he can’t hold that sort of thing in.

“Maybe it is. Or maybe we let it think it‘s God.”

Dean finally managed to stand. Knowing what the hell it was that was making him fall to pieces seemed to help in gathering some of it back together again. God isn’t watching him, instead staring down into the ground and has gone silent and inanimate. There’s a grotesque hunch dragging down a shoulder. And it makes him want to go closer, see if this is the point of weakness. So instead of threatening the intent of homicide, his grasp was gentle, to pull him _closer_ ; made him think of kisses and feeling close and a general pervading sense that this was going to be the last time that he had anything that even resembled Cas in front of him.

Even as that clear a thought came through, Dean felt like he might throw up or pass out and both were frightening so he put all his focus into fighting for consciousness. Clinging to prayer seemed to help. He prayed for it to be taken back. It was too much. What did you expect. A piece could mean anything. If Castiel really was the size of the Chrysler building, a piece could definitely be enough to kill him. But he’d be damned if he didn’t try to take at least one more swing at the big bad.

Dean’s grip tightened. He kept praying, starting to think that maybe if he did it hard enough, Cas might be able to come through. At first he just thought his name again and again and again but it turned into apologies and pleading. He refuses to acknowledge the smell of death that the whole vessel is carrying because he needs to believe so badly that Cas is alive or at least whole in the way that angels were.

And everything starts to feel sobering. The strength goes back into his legs and standing isn’t so strenuous. His head stops pounding and echoing and sounding like forests. He snaps back to attention and it stings for a second.

“Good-bye, Dean,” the god said. But it’s voice was dull, like it was having difficulty getting through. Like it was _conflicted._ It lunged sideways as though making to leave, clumsy, behemoth.

“Cas!” Dean shouted. Maybe this is like how it’d been with Sam and Lucifer, maybe he could get through if he just tried to draw Cas‘s attention back to him, give him a place to focus on getting to. He hoped that the idea was the miracle he was looking for. But maybe the Winchesters had used up all their saving grace.

“I‘m sorry,” he tell him. “I’m sorry I didn’t trust you. I’m sorry I didn’t give you a reason to believe that I could do anything for you. I should have done better and I have a lot of excuses for why I acted like such a shit, but none of them mean anything; I’m just sorry Cas. I know that doesn’t mean much now. I fucked up.”

The thing just stood there, stock still the way Dean never liked when monsters did because it meant they might try something desperate, try to get clever at the last minute. He waited. When he breathed out his breath staggered and he was sure that his whole body was expanding to fill up the sky; just anticipation, adrenaline, the familiar kind of intoxication he had to work through. He has to lock his whole body to stop from falling when he hears Cas’s voice. His real voice.

“I read The Odyssey at Bobby’s. The lotus-eaters; I thought of you. To just…disappear into time. I did not know they would take those things and use them.”

Cas drew his face near, staring him down the way Dean never got used to, and for a second Dean knew for certain that Cas was in there and this was really him, fighting everything as best he could, going down kicking and screaming like a proper Winchester and Dean couldn't help but feel a surge of pride course through him at the thought.

“Is that an apology?” Dean asked because he wasn’t expecting one. And if this really was an opportunity, he knew he should have been asking Cas how the hell they could fix this. His lips felt numb. He tried to wait patiently for an answer, but there were so many things he wanted to do all at once with this sudden clarity. He grabs at Cas just to prove that he‘s there, _really there_ and ready to do whatever he needed him to do.

“Gods don’t apologize,” Dean forced out with a reedy laugh. “How are we supposed to trust you if you feel guilty about anything? Maybe that’s why the old god left. Maybe he felt guilty for being such a shit father.”

“Dean, that is stupid. Why would a God feel guilty?”

Dean pressed his face into the hollow between Castiel’s jaw and shoulders and laughs like he means it this time because for the first time in a long time he really does. That‘s exactly the Castiel he loved. Dean clung to the familiar body tightly, using the opportunity for the intimacy and pretending that it was the place he fit best. Because before it usually felt like it was.

“Maybe God isn’t what you think it is. Because maybe one day, God regretted everything, just wanted to die. Death said he’d reap God one day. Maybe he meant you., I don’t know,” Dean rambled, muffled like he was speaking from a grave. “You’re going to miss me too, when you kill me. And I mean, _really_ kill me, like wipe me off the face of existence completely so that you’ll be the only one who ever remembered me. Probably can’t nuke your own memory, can you? Not the way you did Lisa and Ben. You’ll just remember me, forever, and it’ll be as poison as all the things crawling around inside you, Cas. It’ll kill you. I promise you that. I hope that scares you. It scares me…I don’t want it to happen. I want you to come back. You‘re not God, even if all those things try to convince you that you are. Remember that at least. You‘re Castiel. Goddamn angel of the fucking Lord and that meant something to you before.”

There’s a hand pressing on the back of his skull and it feels nice there, a little like home. Even if he was angry and he shouldn’t be saying stupid things when this could be his last chance to ever say anything to Cas he let all the stupid words out. And because of his anger he heard the earth creeping in on them, and the breeze compressing them. He breathed in the black, hot air from Cas’s skin, thought of how it used to taste like light and cold mountain air. Now it was just rot and earth.

“You don’t have a lot of time, do you?” Dean asks. Because now that he can think it through without having freaking angel bits inside of him, he doesn’t believe that ‘God’ came around just to mess with him for it’s own amusement. Because it makes a lot more sense that Cas still had some influence over the things inside him. Because maybe those things thought they might investigate, and didn’t realize that Cas might fight his way out top again to get to him. To get to _him_ ; even if it was just a theory, it offered some comfort.

"Dean," he began, "I need to take the souls back to purgatory before this vessel is depleted. If I do not, they will...escape. I cannot say what will happen if that comes to pass."

Dean felt his eyes widen with surprise, realizing; there were no monsters left because Cas was taking them with him, tricking the others into okaying that too. He was still angry because firstly, he felt on some level that he was being robbed blind, but more importantly, still thought that it was _wrong_ because where the hell did that leave him. But then it hit him, what Cas was really saying.

"No! Fuck, Cas, we can still fix this! I didn‘t want to lose you, dammit."

Cas laughed and there was something metallic to it.

"Fixing it was finding a way to throw myself back in."

Dean felt himself slammed into the dirt, staring up at Egypt’s sky until all he saw were Castiel's eyes taking him down with their overwhelming blue. He pressed his palm down into _that shoulder_. Written on his face was his struggle for control and it looked like they might tear through it at any second.

“They are fighting me again, Dean. I did not mean to do that.”

(but _that_ palm on _that_ shoulder belongs).

And he looks scared and it terrifies him. Cas doesn’t ever look fucking _scared_.

“Dean, you look terrified,” Cas smiled. It looked like it hurt. Dean sits up carefully, wary of the things inside Cas that now realized they had to beat him back down. Castiel is on a bent knee beside him, one hand clutching tightly at the sand, all the lines tense.

“I’m terrified because I trust you for no damn good reason,” Dean replies. He put as much conviction into it as he could. It was hard because it meant this really was it.

“Reasons as plentiful as excuses,” Cas said, wryly. And Dean can’t help but smile back for a second before he feels like he’s falling apart again. “I‘m sorry, Dean.”

“Cas…”

He was going to say ‘I love you’, but he must’ve not needed to because it’s the best damn kiss of his life, the kind that you know nothing else compares too. It’ll hurt later. But for a moment, it’s almost like he’s swallowed up some part of Cas again, except this time it’s just pure ecstasy and makes him feel like he can fight everything. He thrusts his hands up just to hold on and it’s all heat and tastes clean in way it shouldn‘t, the way that the vessel was going. In any other situation he’d have felt embarrassed for the strangled sound that heard himself make and how his whole body seemed to be trying to trap Cas there with him. He struggled a little, rocks digging into his shoulder. Stubble scraped against him, teeth grazed one another as it got sloppy and Dean had to fight his way out for air. When it ends, he realizes that, shit, he couldn’t walk himself two feet if he wanted to. His eyes are still closed, waiting until he can.

His heart plummets when he hears the sound of wings disappearing Cas away, before he gets to open his eyes. He turns over into the sand, bringing his arms over his head, feeling pitiful. Everything buckles in. This night has been too much about disappearing.

“Dean?”

His brother’s worried voice and he chokes. The dirt underneath his hands is the dirt in Bobby’s salvage yard. Smell of metal and alcohol.

“The fuck?” he croaks out. He looks up to Sammy, and judging by his brother’s expression, he must look like shit. Worse than usual, because his towering figure is coming down into his mess to join him. An enormous hand pushes him upright. He hears him shout for Bobby and he panics, pushing his brother away and starts trying to get as far the fuck away that he can, goes to the car, arms himself. He yells over his shoulder for his family to leave him the hell alone. When they try to ask questions he has his gun in his hand and knows that he wouldn’t ever shoot, but it gets the point across.

“Cas, you shit! Why’d you fucking bother!” It doesn’t really sound like that though. It just sounds like a fucking animal dying. He tosses the gun, which he never does, but he doesn’t trust himself. Just starts walking. Get’s reigned back in by Sam who tells him he’s freezing and then suddenly he’s aware that he is, still soaked from the water. He can‘t get the words together to tell them what happened so they tell him that it‘s okay and never mind and we‘ll figure this out later as long as it didn’t mean getting dead now.

The next morning, or late afternoon, he can’t tell; he wakes up in a bed of blue lotus and his body aches like he’s been fighting all night. He guesses he had and doesn’t for a second believe or hope that anything that happened was a dream. He didn’t dream like that. Swallowing hard, he sinks into it, and draws his arms around himself to hold himself together.

“Can’t even say that I’ll see you in hell,” he muttered. “Unless I can say that I’ll drag you out of purgatory first.”

The smell of clean blossoms lull him back into a heady sleep.


End file.
